Greetings, freaks, wierdo's, and assholes who I just know won't bother to read this part of the fic, IT'S IMPORTANT DAMMIT! Anyhow, welcome to my walking dead au fanfic, first, the info, in this fic, the infection is a little different from the standard virus, first, yes, dyeing is still the main way of a walker being born, but instead, this fic adds in the bite danger, when a walker bites a normal human, rather than infecting them with other things, they instead trigger a chain reaction that causes the infection to activate while they're still alive, quickly deteriorating the brain until the only thing left is the basic functions of survive and reproduce. Another difference, in this world it is possible for a person to be born with an immunity, similar to the survivors of the left 4 dead series, however it is even rarer, as literally no cases have been discovered in this universe. Now then, enough crap involving my insanely convoluted alternate universe, let's just start the action!
A dimly lit street, shone upon by the morning sun, to most, this would be a pleasant sight, but in this world, it only means you survived another day in hell. Walking down said street, a duo, a man and a woman, both appearing to be barely past their teens, walked down this same street. The man looked around, a rifle slung over his back in a leather holster, his tattered jeans a clear representation of his travels, he adjusted the collar on his trench coat, as he looked around he stopped, and ushered his companion to hold steady, around him was seemingly nothing but desert, to his left, an empty expanse, the only thing dotting the landscape being the cacti and a few skeletons, the remains of some unfortunate soul that couldn't make it in this world, to his right, a sign that once read, welcome to Las Vegas, now covered in dust, with illegible graffiti written on it in what appeared to be blood, the woman spoke up as the man scanned the area, placing her hands on her hips, her own coat, worn over what appeared to be a simple blouse and a pair of jeans, the latter having been modified to have leather sewn onto them, fluttered in the light breeze, "why are we stopped?"
The man replied, "I heard something, sounded like a large group of something," just then, the sound of glass being shattered could be heard, "come on, we best see what that was."
The woman nodded and followed as her companion ran off, sidling up to a wall, they peered around a corner at what appeared to be a supermarket, surrounded by walkers, "holy…crap," the woman whispered out in a fearful tone
The man turned, "Charis," he whispered, catching the woman's attention as she adjusted her black hair, looking towards him, "toss me the .308 rounds and find somewhere to hide, you don't have a weapon and this is going to get messy," to this Charis looked at him afraid, then nodded and reached into the large pack she was carrying, throwing him a sandwich bag filled with .308 rounds, she then snuck off, the man then looked towards the horde and dumped the sandwich bag into his coat pocket, then, with his left hand, reached into the opposite coat pocket and looked at a grenade, 'good thing I saved this little beauty,' he thought, the grenade reeked of sweat, he quickly pocketed it again, sneaking up farther he saw another group, but this one appeared to be human, a group dressed in makeshift armor, some of it appearing to be made up of human flesh, 'damn, who are these guys?' he took the bandanna off his head, revealing well-trimmed, black hair, 'keep calm, Douglas, recon and recovery, then we'll see about search and destroy.'
The smallest member of the group looked to the largest, he spoke his voice carrying a light tone with a slight southern accent, "well, boss? What we gonna do?"
The other man replied, "simple," his voice was gruff and coarse, "we wait for them to die, then we finish off the walkers and loot their corpses, we'll be the only survivors if I can help it."
"sounds good boss, but what about the others?"
"Thompson and the others will meet us here within the hour, by then it'll only be corpses left."
Douglas tied the bandanna around his head, making a facemask out of it, the only thing visible over his mouth being a skull mouth from the bandanna, 'search and destroy it is,' he reached over his right shoulder, drawing the rifle from its holster, it was a long-barreled makeshift rifle, appearing to be scrounged from a broken rifle with a 2x4 as the frame, the stock was cracked from overuse, and it appeared to be a single shot only, without anything to dampen the sound it was undoubtedly a loud gun, 'as soon as I fire, those undead pricks will come running, so,' he looked at the group, which were in a vaguely linear formation at the edge of the parking lot, concealed by a row of bushes, the four of them blissfully unaware of the assassin in their midst, 'one shot, four kills,' Douglas snuck around, he took aimed, sat down he used one hand to maneuver the gun while the other arm rested on his knee, balancing the firearm, he opened the receiver and loaded a single round by hand, clicking it in, one of the men seemed to notice as his head twitched, but it was too late, Douglas pushed the earbud in his right ear in farther to further dampen the sound, 'see you in hell,' he pulled the trigger, the gunshot echoing throughout the alleyways and parking lot of the city supermarket, the bullet pierced the head of the first, before going through the next three with little resistance, lodging inside of the head of the final man, Douglas stood up, putting the gun back in its holster, 'alright, now or never,' the walkers had heard the gunshot, and were rushing towards Douglas in a horde, he pulled out the grenade, pulling the pin, he cooked the grenade before hurling it into the crowd, which quickly caught whiff of the sweaty scent of the grenade, believing it to be their prey, Douglas pushed back his trench coat, pulling a machete from his hip, '3,' he took a practice swing, '2,' he took a few steps back, lifting up one of the dead bodies he had just killed and using it as a shield, '1,' the grenade detonated sending shrapnel, limbs, and bone fragments in all directions, as Douglas stood up, dropping the now shrapnel ridden body of his enemy, he walked to the few walkers that still remained, quickly dispatching them each with swift slash through the neck, decapitating them, 'I should tell Charis it's all clear…no, these people I just saved may be dangerous, best to wait and recon the situation,' Douglas walked up to the supermarket, stepping in through one of the broken windows, he flicked the blood off his machete, he knocked on a door, when it opened a large sledgehammer slammed into the ground, nearly smashing Douglas, who responded by stepping atop the head of the hammer and placing his blade against the throat of the user, "you got half a second to apologize after I saved your ass."
The large man holding the sledgehammer handle stepped back suddenly, holding his hand's up, "I'm so sorry, I thought you were a walker!"
Douglas sighed and sheathed his machete, "whatever," he looked over the man's shoulder, seeing two more people sitting against the wall in the back of the storage closet, a man and a woman, "you three are welcome by the way, but I need to get on the road," as Douglas turned, a hand was placed on his shoulder
The man with the sledgehammer said, "hey wait, we could use someone like you to help us out, we all wanna survive, right?"
Douglas looked at the man's hand and brushed it off, "that depends, what do you want from me?"
"We all want to get to DC."
"DC, why the hell you makin' that big of a journey?"
"it's supposedly the only safe haven left in the world"
Douglas lifted an eyebrow, "alright, you have my attention, don't waste it, who the hell are you three?"
"My name is Jonah, I'm a brawler and de facto leader of my group, the woman is named Lalum, she's our medic, and the last guy is the chef, his name's Brant," after the introduction, Douglas looked at the ragtag group, Jonah was clothed in torn cargo pants, other than this he was wearing a dirty white tank-top, Lalum was dressed in a ratty dress fastened at the waist by a tight belt, underneath this was a pair of ripped black jeans, her hair was messy but could be identified as a faded ginger which had been tied back into a ponytail, and Brant was wearing a rolled up chef's uniform, stained from the many uses and clearly having been splattered with blood before, on his hip was a holster for a large kitchen knife, Jonah and Brant both wore wraps around their heads to protect themselves from the harsh desert air, making it impossible to distinguish their hair colors, each of them had a backpack on or next to them, presumably to haul their supplies and ammo. As Jonah put his pack on, he pulled out two tomahawks, "sorry about the sledge, I just grabbed the nearest heavy object that I could use as a shield, happened to be that hammer."
Douglas walked towards the door, "forget about it, and I'll go with you, but I already have a companion, so she comes too."
"Fine by us!" the three said in unison, then looked at each other strangely
Suddenly, a loud, shrill scream came from outside, "Merde, that sounded like Charis," Douglas quickly dashed out, smashing through a window and rolling as he landed, "Charis!"
Standing in front of him were a group of bandits, dressed in the same garb as the ones that he had killed earlier, "there's the little son of a bitch what killed our boys, I bet!" said one of them
The largest one turned around, holding up Charis by her wrists, "well, well, well, this piece of ass yours then? Great, makes enslaving 'er that much sweeter."
The three newcomers were watching from the window, preparing for a fight, but suddenly, they could feel a change in the air, it became tense and dangerous, Jonah asked quietly, his tomahawks at the ready, "what the hell's going on?"
When the other's shook their heads, they looked towards Douglas, and they felt their hearts skip a beat, it was as though he had this aura around him, he was undeniably pissed off, and he wasn't hiding it, "you little dickheads are gonna learn the meaning of the term, mad minute!" he shouted, drawing his machete and taking off towards the one holding Charis.
Ah, the cliffhanger, a grand way to end the first episode, aint it? Anyways, let me know what you think of it in a review, if you have anything you think could be done to make the story better, let me know, but please do try to at least pretend you can respect another author, mmkay?